


Baby Boy C.

by distractionpie



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Discussion of Abortion, Family, Gen, Infertility mentions, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 00:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16505420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Hank and his wife have been trying for a time. Gavin just made a mistake. Nobody is content with what they have but maybe there's a future that works.





	Baby Boy C.

**Author's Note:**

> For kink meme prompt: [Gavin was Cole's biological father](https://dbh-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/717.html?thread=85197#cmt85197)

20 months they’d been trying. First confident, excited, in love but then as the months passed with no result things had grown tenser, first there’d been vitamins and then there’d been timings and things had grown more and more obsessive until finally things had come to a head and they’d stopped. Everything. And Hank was starting to think that their failure to conceive was also going to make this a failure of a marriage, too many harsh words slipping out of his mouth about the effects of the lifestyle his wife had once led before settling down while she sneered sly remarks about the fact his salary wouldn’t stretch to the more high end fertility treatments and his job wasn’t suited to jumping through the hoops required to qualify for adoption via the state.

He’d been looking for a distraction when he’d noticed how wrecked Reed looked when he’d walked into the bullpen that morning.

Perhaps it was a testament to Hank’s interrogation skills or perhaps Reed was just such a mess that his usual standoffish attitude was overruled by the need to share his burdens with another but it hadn’t taken long for it all to come spilling out. A casual girlfriend, a split condom, and Reed had by accident managed what Hank had been failing at for nearly two years.

And now he didn’t know what to do.

Hank hadn’t pegged Reed for the type to freak out about that sort of thing, he seemed more like the kind of guy who would decide that it wasn’t his problem or, if he wanted to stay with his girlfriend, to give her the money to go to a clinic and expect her to deal with things so he could pretend the mistake had never happened. But even having just made youngest Lieutenant in Detroit history didn’t make Hank infallible and apparently Reed had done neither of those things. His girlfriend had some moral view that kept her from taking the fastest way out and Reed wasn’t walking away, a few murmured remarks slipping out about growing up without a father that revealed more of his past than Hank had even cared to learn.

He’d unwillingly become Reed’s confidant after that, listening to updates he didn’t want about Gavin’s ingratitude at getting everything Hank had been trying for, being presumed upon for favours when Gavin needed somebody to cover his work because he was being, in his own words, ‘dragged along’ to the type of appointments Hank longed for - culminating in pulling a double shift and ignoring the furious messages from his wife at his absence because Gavin’s girlfriend had gone into labour and demanded he be with her.

But for all of Reed’s complaining, when he next turned up at the office his haggard expression was accompanied by the first smile Hank had ever seen from him that wasn’t at somebody else's expense.

It doesn’t last.

He starts showing up late, spending most of his working day drifting back and forth to the coffee machine and barely making progress on his cases, but Hank isn’t the only one who’s noticed the way he’s changed, with his usual agressive work ethic it’s hard to miss that something is up when he suddenly seemed to have stopped giving a fuck, but if other people also know then Hank figures he can just ignore it.

Until Gavin doesn’t turn up and doesn’t call in.

And there’s some eye-rolling and some bitching and some very vicious muttering from the officers that Reed has pissed off over the years that are hoping he’ll be fired for this but all Hank can think about is the baby, his deepest wish in Gavin’s hands and is Gavin’s sloppiness at working carrying over to his care of that kid?

He pulls Gavin’s address from his file and drives over after work.

The door is unlocked, stupid in a neighbourhood like Reed’s,  and when he walks in the apartment in a dump, beyond even what can be expected of Reed as a schlubby young guy -- the dishes, the laundry, sure, Hank’s been there, but the garbage overflowing with a pile of diapers is just gross.

Not as gross as Reed looks though. It seems like he hasn’t showered since he was last on shift, or maybe even longer, his hair thick with grease while his usual five o’clock shadow has grown out into the beginnings of a patchy beard. There’s baby vomit and possibly worse on his shirt as he lays slumped against a kitchen counter, clinging to a wailing infant but staring at it with a look of blank panic that Hank is more used to seeing on the victims of violent crime.

He’s holding the kid, and Hank guesses that’s a point in his favour, but making no effort to soothe it and so Hank walks over and plucks the kid out of his arms.

For a moment the cries rise, some impressive lungs on this kid, but he holds the kid close and it only takes a few gentle rocks for it to start to calm, screams settling into whimpers.

“What the fuck Reed?!”

Gavin blinks up at him, as if only just registering his presence, eyes drifting over him, flicking briefly to the kid before he leans forward, burying his face in his hands.

Okay. Hank can’t deal with Reed’s shit right now.

He rocks the kid some more, sidestepping Reed to get a better look at the kitchen. There’s a jar of infant formula on the counter, lid ajar and power spilling across the worktop. There’s a handful of baby bottles filled with varying levels of water scattered around but Hank remembers the excited reading he’d done back when he and his wife had first started trying to conceive and decides that given Reed’s state he’s not going to put any faith in the fact that the bottles or water have been sterilised.

It takes a moment of juggling to get the kid securely gripped on one arm but he turns Gavin stove on and starts a pan of water heating and then turns back to Reed who hasn’t moved from his wrecked looking slump.

“Where’s...?” Fuck, Gavin has probably mentioned his girlfriend’s name a few dozen times but Hank had never really been listening, “...The mom?”

Reed looks up, face twisted into an expression that’s bitter and ugly as he says, “Walked out. Apparently she was all for keeping the pregnancy but she hadn’t thought through the baby part. She barely lasted a week.”

Hadn’t lasted a week, and the kid in Hank’s arms, so tiny and fragile has been utterly dependent on Reed ever since. “But you’ve been coming into work,” Hank points out, clutching the blanket wrapped bundle tighter and feeling something tighten in his chest. Even Reed wouldn’t be such a scumbag as to just leave the kid alone, right?

“Neighbour,” Reed replies, waving a hand. “But she’s decided she doesn’t want to deal anymore. Bitch. It’s not like I wasn’t paying her.”

After a moment of consideration, Hank decides he’s just not going to engage with that. “Go take a shower Reed,” he orders. “You’re disgusting.”

It’s probably the first time Reed has followed one of his orders without even a hint of bitching, dragging himself off the floor and staggering out of the room, followed by the sound of a shower running a few moments later.

Hank focuses on making the formula, steps he’s learned but never got to put into practise, and a few minutes later he had a fresh clean bottle ready.

Feeling a moment of pity, he pours a little of the remaining boiling water into a mug and stirs in two spoons of instant coffee from the jar on the counter, then he takes himself over to the couch to feed the kid.

Reed looks a little more human when he staggers back in, joining Hank on the couch, coffee in hand. He’s hasn’t bothered to shave but he’s wearing sweatpants that aren’t visibly filthy and looks a bit more like a functional human being, at least as much as he ever does.

“You’re good at that,” he says, sounding flabbergasted at the sight of the kid sucking down the final dregs of milk in the bottle Hank is feeding it. “He isn’t crying.”

He. Good to know. Hank resists the urge to point out that what he’s doing isn’t that hard, he’d spent months hoping and preparing while Reed just sort of stumbled into this and Hank needs Reed reasonable now more than he needs to be right. 

“Let me take him,” Hank says, the suggestion that has been brewing in his mind ever since first picking up the kid. “Get some sleep, get your shit together so you can figure out a plan, because you can’t keep on like this.” If tries to Hank is gonna have to call Child Protection Services and he really doesn’t want to do that, to the kid or to Reed, but the scene he’d walked in on would only have ended in tears if he hadn’t interrupted it.

“Alright,” Reed says, and the ease of his agreement unsettles Hank. Sure, he knows he can take care of the kid but Reed shouldn’t be giving it up so easily.

For a while they sit in silence, the kid finishes the bottle and Hank pats his back to soothe the gas that has no doubt resulted from the speed with which the kid drank the milk despite Hank’s attempts to pace the flow. He doesn’t feel underweight and the mess in the kitchen suggests Reed has been attempting feeds but Hank doesn’t know the kids birth size and it’s clear he’d been allowed to get to the point of being uncomfortable hungry.

Reed watches the whole process with a strange look in his eye and as Hank resettles the kid in his arms once the whole feeding process is done Reed scrubs a hand over his eyes.

“I-- I can’t do this,” the words sound like they’re being dragged out of him and Hank supposes they probably are. It must go against everything in the rookie detective’s nature to swallow his pride like that but once he’s said it it’s like the floodgates are open. “I’m not a deadbeat,” he snaps and there’s anger but it’s not enough to smother the shaky defensiveness in his tone. “I didn’t just walk away and let him be Sarah’s problem, even when she refused to just deal with it, I fuckin’, I did everything, the appointments and listening to her bitch and all that bullshit and she was the one who bailed out.” Gavin slams a fist against his palm, tipping his head against the back of the couch. “I... there’s something wrong with that kid Anderson, I feed it, I change it, I carry it, and it just never stops screaming.”

Hank nods, because Gavin might be shaping up to be a shitty parent but it’s hard not to pity him when Hank can see that the kid is picking up on Gavin’s stress and unhappiness with the situation and reacting accordingly which is only making Gavin more agitated, a twisted feedback loop of misery. 

“You don’t have to do this,” he pointed out. “You didn’t look into any options other than abortion?”

Gavin shrugs. “Sarah said she wanted it. I figured she meant to be a mom, not just to do the whole pregnant thing and then ditch. This was supposed to be her job, I was just gonna pay for shit. Maybe take the kid to a ballgame a few times a year once it was old enough.”

And Gavin thought that was the definition of not being a deadbeat? Hank didn’t know if he should be disgusted at how low Gavin was setting the bar or pitying that whatever example Gavin had it made such a half-assed effort seem good to him. “Maybe you need to look into those. Plenty of people would want to adopt a baby and the kid won’t know any different, it’ll be a lot harder if you change your mind further down the line.”

“I’m not giving him to a stranger,” Gavin snaps, and there’s a tiny part of Hank’s mind that latches on to that final word because he’d spent months researching stranger adoptions before being forced to rule them out as impractical but private adoptions are so much more convenient, but also an impossible dream since neither he nor his wife knew anybody interested in being a surrogate or giving up their kid. But Gavin? Gavin’s already made clear that it’s a mercy to have the kid taken off his hands for one night, perhaps he’d be open to more.

Or perhaps Hank is letting his dreams run away with him again.

“I’m gonna go now,” Hank says, and he’s gonna leave his car here and take the subway because he doesn’t have a carseat but he has all the rest of the things for a kid at home, a nursery that’s been waiting for an occupant for far too long. “What did you name him?”

Gavin shrugs. “Sarah wanted a ‘C’ name, some family thing, I dunno. I haven’t really thought about it.”

Jesus christ, a month old and not even a name. Hank gazes down at the infant in his arms, gazing up with sleepy trusting eyes now that he’s been fed, ideas already flickering through his mind.

Just as he’s stepping out the door, Reed grabs his shoulder, fixing him with a steely gaze that’s more focused that anything Hank’s seen from him since the kid was born.

“You’re... if anything happens to him I...” Reed makes an incoherent noise in the back of his throat. “Anderson,” he’s barely coherent but the warning in his tone is clear.

A surge of genuine paternal protectiveness, or just Reed just following what he thinks is the script of the role that’s been thrust upon him?

It doesn’t really matter. If Hank gets his way he’s going to see the kid grow up safer and happier than Reed is capable of even dreaming of.

“He’s safe with me Reed,” Hank assures him. “I promise.”


End file.
